Frizzily

First snow over the old rail way, November 2011 Vancouver Jan 1,...

Sun, 01 Jan 2012 14:41:00 -0800

First snow over the old rail way, November 2011 Vancouver

Jan 1, 2012, 9 x 12

a visit to Monet’s waterlily garden in Giverny (summer...

Fri, 30 Dec 2011 17:18:25 -0800

a visit to Monet’s waterlily garden in Giverny (summer 2011); an experiment with impressionist techniques to capture how the leaves shimmered in the wind

Dec 2011, 18 x 24

experiment with emerald green Dec 2011

Wed, 28 Dec 2011 18:32:56 -0800

experiment with emerald green

Dec 2011

Evening by L’hotel de ville Summer 2011, Paris

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:25:00 -0800

Evening by L’hotel de ville

Summer 2011, Paris

Saule pleureur Summer 2011, Evry

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:24:43 -0800

Saule pleureur

Summer 2011, Evry

memories in Venice Dec 2011, Vancouver

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:23:00 -0800

memories in Venice

Dec 2011, Vancouver

learning to paint portrait Summer 2011, Paris

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:22:35 -0800

learning to paint portrait

Summer 2011, Paris

good times with friends at Raw Canvas Nov 2011, Vancouver

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:22:00 -0800

good times with friends at Raw Canvas

Nov 2011, Vancouver

Caught in the rain storm - a perfect excuse for yummy food at a...

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:20:08 -0800

Caught in the rain storm - a perfect excuse for yummy food at a cafe on Rue Montorgueil!

Summer 2011, Paris

listening to jazz by the Seine Summer 2011, Paris

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:10:00 -0800

listening to jazz by the Seine

Summer 2011, Paris

painting by the Seine - 1 summer 2011, Paris

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:07:55 -0800

painting by the Seine - 1

summer 2011, Paris

painting by the Seine - 2 summer 2011, Paris

Mon, 26 Dec 2011 20:07:00 -0800

painting by the Seine - 2

summer 2011, Paris

Panda crisp

Thu, 20 Oct 2011 20:46:00 -0700

Nutrition Facts

Cholesterol

Protein 3g

Calcium

Best before:

Remember how when you were little, Mom would sit across from you at breakfast, looking at you as you stuffed cereal? You’ve always liked to read the cereal box, she would say. And when you’re older she might add to her college friends, oh boy, he’s gonna be a cereal box reader for the rest of his life, like how he always flings his dirty socks onto the living room floor.

You would make fun of her in your stand-ups. She didn’t have work till noon but would be up even before me, you would tell the crowd. Yankin me out of bed so I can make it to my eight o’clock classes. She would click clack in the kitchen while I stared at nothing with my tooth brush wike wis (and you would demonstrate as ridiculously as you could, hoping the audience would laugh). She would blah and blah and blah (and you would mimic her high pitched Hong Kong drawl) while I gobbled cereal and read the cereal box.

Crispy squares

4 cups

Milk

2 teaspoons

2 cups

Marshmellows

Mix well in pan. Bake for

Aww you’re so cute, Laurie said, I didn’t know you read the cereal box. You noticed with the corner of your eye how pretty Laurie was: smudged eye shadow, uncombed hair.

Perhaps that’s what women do, sitting across the breakfast table and looking at you while you eat cereal. You didn’t share this conclusion at your stand-ups.

Ingredients:

Sugar, wheat flour, corn flour, oat fibre, oil

hydrogenized ascorbic acid, coca powder, white #4, brown #6,

Allergens

Wheat, corn, soybean.

Laurie liked having chicken noodle soup for breakfast. She ate her breakfast much faster than you did. In fact she did everything faster than you did: the way she talked, the way she walked, the way she analyzed the economic and political impact of the new mayor or forecasted the performance of her hedge fund. But after she wiped her mouth and daubed her lips scarlet, she would look at you as you read your cereal box, perhaps straightening her teal blazer, perhaps slipping on her panty hose. Then would be the pecks of her stiletto boots on the wooden stairs. You would sit there, like a boy standing by the shuddering tracks watching the increasingly distant smoke of the train. Perhaps you would jot down a few story ideas on a napkin.

Giant panda George is lost. Can you help him find him way out? Draw a track through this maze so he can reach his bamboos.

You sure felt a bit more self-conscious when the baby came, didn’t ya? A thirty something eating in front of the toddler the good old Panda Crisp. Laurie liked to feed the baby breakfast herself. Even the baby felt the efficiency when she was with Laurie: what would normally take her an hour to eat would happen in merely fifteen minutes. Laurie would remind you not to make her dinner (networking). And then off she went, her new nerdy black Gucci frames deepening the angles of her face.

You might poke at the baby’s nose and laugh while she giggles, or change her diapers as she wiggled her chubby little arms and legs. Or mop the floor and wipe the toilet. As light melts into darkness you would have dinner with the baby, a bite for you, a spoonful for her. You might entertain her with impressions of the interviewers who never called you back. She would laugh.

Panda crisp inspired by love for our daughter. with the freshest fluffs of oat fibres, . The Chinese say a good start is half of the finish,

Mom retired, but she kept her ways, huh? Waking up early and yanking you out of bed, dragging you to the breakfast table bright and early. And there she would sit, looking at you as you munched your cereal, and talk and talk and talk.

When will you wake up and do something real with your life? Look around you, which forty something still lives with the poor old mother?

Cholesterol

Sugars

20%

20mg
4%

Oh Billie.

Mom sighed, and went back upstairs.

And you stare at the cereal box, looking but not really looking. You bundle up the empty part of the cereal bag, gave it a twist and carefully swung it into a knot.

Eddie's walk

Sat, 11 Jun 2011 13:17:48 -0700

It had always been 3:00 pm for Eddie ever since he moved to this planet. Eddie walked straight along the equator, exactly as fast as the little planet rotates, in the opposite direction. He walked through bazaars made of orange tents bustling with the old lady’s bargaining shrieks and the butcher’s crisp chop down a pig thigh and chicken bicker and fluster and the roaring fire of wok fry, through a pair of teenage lovers as they were about to make out, through immaculate dining halls and even on top of the century old tables in them, trudging through garbled roast lamb drowsed in Syrah and splashing over dainty bowls of clam chowder.

He walked to sing, he walked to think. Frail and always slightly hunched, one hand on his knocking cane, the other tucked behind his back. He liked to sing lines from Wagner’s opera, so out of tune that people would politely blast Spice Girls songs or get their Chihuahuas to bark.

He walked to sleep, he walked to dream – if you ever heard snoring, you’d be pretty sure that it was Eddie’s. He walked to talk. Barefooted little kids in their hand-me-down tank tops and shorts would swarm after him as he told stories. Well, they couldn’t actually hear the whole story, only caught bits here and there the way they slap onto their palms dandelions drifting in the wind. After a while they’d be tired from running to keep up with his splayed gait, and the older kids would piggyback the younger ones. But one by one the children would bend over by the road, panting over their knees, angry at their powerless little limbs to have missed the stories. They would rub the sweat off their sunburnt cheeks, and squint at Eddie’s slanted silhouette as it shrunk and shrunk and evaporated in the horizon.

And so eventually the people of the little planet named that little equator trail after Eddie. Every 3:00pm, you would sure hear the staccato of his cane. Little kids would wait along it, sucking flavoured ice cubes or napping on the shoulders of their sisters, waiting for his stories or giggling as he snored past.

But one day, Eddie’s spot was empty. The kids squinted, waiting for Eddie’s head to poke out of the horizon. A Chihuahua barked tentatively. They stared at the gigantic maroon clock glittering by the train station. 3:02pm. 3:34pm. 5:00pm. Still no echo of his cane. One by one, the children stumbled along the direction of the rotating planet. At first they were skipping. Then they started to run, faster and faster into the night.

In the darkness they saw him, pastel in the smoggy sighs of city lights. He was sitting on a big rock, leaning into his cane. The kids slowed their pace, and silently sat around him, waiting to finally hear his stories. Accustomed to seeing his back as they would try to catch up to him, they were a bit surprised to see his face, bushy brows and a bushy beard. His eyes were closed, and he wasn’t snoring, nor talking, nor singing.

After a while, a kid sneezed. Most of the little guys had fallen asleep amidst the flitter and chatter of night creatures. One of the older girls stood up to poke at Eddie’s big, callused hand, and realized that he had frozen into a stone statue.

Mother

Thu, 31 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

Daddy liked his bedroom minimalistic. A lamp tucked away in a corner, really not doing much in this windowless basement. Maple charcoal floor, empty except for a closet and his bed. White walls, no picture, no poster, no mirror, like a blank stare.

I stood by the doorway, looking at the strings of smoke squiggling shadows on the wall.

The smoke made me cough.

Sweetie, go play, said Daddy. He wasn’t in my view, but from his voice I figured he was probably sitting on his twin-sized bed, the bedding as blank as the walls.

I couldn’t see where the smoke originated from. She sat in front of it, cross legged, her back facing me, her tangled burgundy hair as tortuous as the smoke, splashing all over her black leather jacket.

                                                 —-

Perhaps an artist had spilled her cheap wine on the canvas. An accident, a flurry of foliage deep into the fall that buried a summer full of footprints, your clarinet might get lost in it.

That was the first and last time I saw my Mother.

Sweetie, go to the playground.

Every once a while, the artist would spill her wine, and snow would dissolve into spring and then it would be summer and within a blink of a second it would be fall. And soon the world would be covered in burgundy, the way the volcanic ashes covered the people in Pompeii while they were still mid sentence, shrouding the rest of their words into mystery. And then the snow would blanket the burgundy, an expressionless canvas, waiting for the next splash.

And I would find myself in a coffee shop, or a stuffy Greyhound bus, or lining up with my grandson at McDonald’s, staring at the burgundy in front of me, waiting for her to turn around.

                                                 —-

Her fingers rested on the edge of the poster, around the middle. She ripped it, like unveiling something. She crumbled the poster and threw it at the little bon fire, not even looking, the way you fling an apple core into the waste basket. Flames licked parts of the poster into darkness. The discarded poster revealed a blank spot in the wall, naked amongst the mosaic of photos and posters. She went for the next poster.

Sweetie, go, said Daddy.

Before we moved Daddy’s bedroom had a little window, and he would sit on the window sill, his feet dangling onto his twin-sized bed, staring at the window. I’m not sure what he was looking at, maybe the glaze of his reflection, maybe the dumpster outside. Maybe that was what he was doing, sitting on his bed with his feet dangling onto the floor, looking at the bare walls, an empty stage except for the crawling scribbles of leftover tape.

She sat cross-legged, her back facing me, a raging burgundy. Immortalized scenes of sepia evaporated in the dancing smoke.

                                                     —-

Every now and then I’d crawl through the dark tunnels of my memory vault, a headlamp on my helmet. Maybe a snapshot of her would be buried somewhere, unfiled, untitled. Maybe I had kept my memory as minimalistic as Daddy’s bedroom, so if you stumbled in, all you could see would be the blank stare of the blank walls.

Faces, one of which might be my Mother’s. Expressionless in front of a bare wall. I shook my head at each one, and started to cry.

Let’s not do this anymore, this is too much for her. One of the police women put the photos away and gave me a lollipop, maybe strawberry.

I stood by the doorway, trying not to cough. An arabesque of smoke, dotted with little black specs, like dust glittering in the morning sun. Legs crossed, back straight, as if she were warming up for ballet.

[short short story]

What does education do to us?

Wed, 30 Mar 2011 22:59:00 -0700

One thing I find interesting about nature is its motif of generating genetic diversity. Through ways little and big such as errors in copying DNA, swapping DNA between neighbouring bacteria, and inheriting some but not all traits from each parent, life forms change and adapt. The paradox is, even when one characteristic can be more prevalent than others due to its survival advantages (hence the saying of survival of the fittest, the fittest traits being passed down), genetic information is deliberately programmed to diversity. That’s why bacteria can adopt new resistance arsenal from to evade antibiotics, and why having a baby with your first cousin might not be the best idea.

What is really smart about nature is that it recognizes that environment changes, so that today’s pros can be tomorrow’s cons as a volcano erupts or the climate gets colder. A classical example is if the wall is completely pink, the pink butterfly will have a survival advantage over other colours by better evading predators, and most of the butterflies will be pink. The interesting thing here is that despite the obvious advantage of pink butterflies, nature still has its ways to generate genetic variation so that other colours and traits might be possible. (For example, Yellow butterflies may still be able to survive if they can fly faster than others.) If somebody painted the wall green, suddenly the butterflies with a mutation for green camouflage will be favoured, and as the pink butterflies get caught by predators most of the butterfly population will be green.

The diversity in the genetic information within the population allows that should conditions change, by chance there could be a trait that would be superior than the rest in thriving in the new environment, and this trait becomes the next norm.

Our education system parallels the multiplication of cells in nature in many ways. Similar to nature, schools passes down the knowledge of one generation to the other. Curiously, unlike nature, our schools doesn’t deliberately foster knowledge diversity. It transfers the old wisdom thinking that it will still apply regardless of changes in the new environment. In K-12 and undergrad, the ability to become homogenized into the dominant beliefs is valued over exploring fringe ideas or developing new ways of thinking.

There’s some merit to this rapid download of knowledge, but will this drown out the renegade ideas or approaches that can be particularly effective when new challenges arise? Perhaps we need to evaluate the role of intellectual diversity in education, both in terms of the diversity of knowledge, and the diversity of approaches to learn.

My questions are, what does education do to us, and what should education do? If creativity is what’s often valued, how do you teach creativity?

Interestingly, with most revolutionary startups headed by 20 somethings who didn’t finish university, compared to other disciplines the IT field seemed to be one step ahead in redefining education. A few observations about the IT field that are often absent in other disciplines:

crowd source and collaboration
open source codes
vibrant developer communities
no set school/curriculum - people just try and fail and try again
judged by usability, design, and innovation, not multiple choice
lots of opportunities to learn, test, and practice
no “censorship” - ie. upload all crap and gem, let the market determine whether something is crap or gem; successes and failures are both shared. In the scientific publishing world: good luck (only significant results are published)

These are just my guesses. In upcoming posts, I will approach the questions I posed by first chatting with people in the IT arena to find out how they learned what they know, how the field has made itself a fertile ground for innovation, and what this could mean for education.

Lemme know if you have any thoughts/ideas/suggestions!

Photo credit: 123 posters

Twice in Venice

Thu, 24 Mar 2011 00:00:00 -0700

The tide wakes her from her nap. Not sure since when, the water has swept across the balcony, ankle-high. In the setting sun, a few roofs peek through the water. Far in the distance to her right are the soaring domes of the Basilica di San Marco, slowly swallowed by the glimmering tides.

Swish swash, swish swash, the quiet breathing of the water.

She pushes hard against the arm chair to lift herself up. One hand on a cane, the other against the wall, she shuffles back into the living room, the knock of the cane muffled by the soggy carpet.

It’s a quarter past nine, still. The clock battery has given its last sigh long ago as time froze, an iceberg waiting to be dissolved by the dark green water. The ornate furniture, the beautiful artwork and the feeble flame of a half-burnt candle are as though a photograph, only the growing sepia betraying the swish swash of time. Whoever lived here must have left in a hurry, not taking much with them. She wonders whether they had felt as she did a few days ago.

“That’s all,” She had stared at the half-empty suitcase that summarized her seven decades of life.

She decides to have butter chicken for dinner. Putting on her glasses, she finds the pill bottle with a picture resembling the dish. She takes out a tablet and chews it, savouring the rich taste of artificial curry. Once invented for people who are way too busy to cook or eat, these nutritious chemicals are now the only food available.

She wonders what George would say if he sees her now, munching butter chicken with her bare feet dangling just off the water, filling the protagonist role of a deserted photograph. Maybe George would laugh – he loves her and finds whatever she does amusing, her outlandish ways and irrational rationalizations and all.

Maybe he would cry like a little kid and tell her he misses her.

George was right that she was the only soul insane enough to spend a lifetime’s savings to go to Venice. The young pilot who flew her here – she cannot recall his name – most likely thought so too. The incredulity in his eyes leaked through his gentlemanly politeness, silently thundering “do you know how many other ways we could have used the fuel to win the war?” She continued reading Shakespeare. He had grown up with the patriotic rhetoric of the resource wars, she thought. Like vultures scavenging the last flesh of a giant corpse, the armies wave the glorious banners of freedom and democracy and kill over the last hint of fresh water, the last chatter of leaves in the wind, the last blush of a real apple, and soon, the last glint of oil.

She starts to trudge up to the penthouse bedroom before the tide gets knee-high. The narrow staircase aches and squeals with every step. The first time she was in Venice, she raced up one of these ancient staircases. She was twenty-two – or twenty-three? – back then. Her turquoise summer dress was soaked from dancing and splashing at the St. Marco’s Square. It was acqua alta, and the water had pooled all over the square. The reflections of the lights that lined the square were drenched into millions of shooting stars.

She leans against the bedroom window and gazes out. The riddles of narrow streets woven with light and shadow, the people who came from all over the world, the St. Marco square replete with lights and memories and laughter and heartbreaks… shrouded way beneath the rippling dark green, forgotten. All she can hear, is swish swash, swish swash, the quiet breathing of the sea.

————

The idea of this story came to me when I was traveling in one of the most beautiful places in the world knowing that one day it will be under water.

What’s your story about a sustainability issue in your community, whether in terms of environment, health, economy, government, transportation, etc.? Do you have ideas for a solution? Would love to hear your story and your ideas at the Act NOW! International Performance Festival

[This story also appeared in The Terry Project]

The puppet and the angel

Fri, 12 Nov 2010 00:00:00 -0800

Everyday, as the second hand covers the hour and minute hands, me, the puppet, and the old man would form the apexes of an equilateral triangle. Without a shadow, we would divide the circular piazza precisely in three along its circumference. At 12:02pm, a crowd would emerge from the subway, squinting in the flooding midday sun.

This would herald a few buses of tourists. The tourists would sit in columns and rows like neatly arranged eggs in an egg carton, occasionally a head impatiently poking out of the window.

“Look, it’s an angel and a puppet!” Someone would say as they approach us. Sometimes this would be a father holding the hand of his little daughter, who would only be as tall as his knees but have the aura of my Grandma. She would tug my white robe with her little hand and see if I would move. Sometimes this would be an old Chinese lady muttering in rapid Chinese, sometimes a teenager taking a been-there-done-that picture with his iPhone before moving on, sometimes a local grandpa weaving through the crowds unable to catch up to his grandson.

Beads of sweat emerge from my temples, crawling along gravity.

Most people wouldn’t notice the equilateral triangle – not that the triangle has been planned. I would be the first one to set up. Then the puppet would come, then the old man. And inevitably, we would form the apexes of an equilateral triangle, each of us tacitly obeying the natural attraction and repulsion laws of the universe.

In a dark suit that has forgotten its hues in the washer, the old man would sit on the marble stairs polished by thousands of steps. The piazza is very small, so that I can recognize the “Au Bon Pain” logo on his sandwich bag. The old man spends the whole afternoon eating his lunch, as if a mill of teeth trying to grind bits of muffin into atoms.

The puppet is my biggest competitor. His bucket and mine graciously fight for the same wallets. He has an easier time – he sits motionless on two hollow wooden cubes, one stacked on top of the other, so that he emerges from the sea of heads from waist up. I think the boxes are hollow because of the way he sets up these boxes. About 10 minutes before 12pm, he would arrive carrying one box on top of the other with his palm skyward, like a waiter nonchalantly entering the scene with a plate of steaming lobster.

A sound of coins plummeting in to my bucket. I slowly move my legs into a demi-plié and bow. Merely making good use of the ballet I learned as a kid.

The puppet painted his face white so that his reindeer nose stands out. He wears a puffy purple checkered costume with sleeves that are wide in the middle and narrow at the ends. Playing a discarded puppet, he has his head, legs, and arms connected via strings to a wooden cross. The cross dangles lifelessly along the side of the cubes so that little kids could reach it, and accordingly he would move his arms and legs.

People would perch by my feet amidst pigeons, futilely fanning themselves with a pamphlet or a map. Then a lick of gelato.

-        So I asked the server if there is udon.
-        Was there?
-        Yes. And I asked if there is miso.
-        I’m sure there is.
-        I said I wanted udon in a base of miso soup, but he said no, there’s ramen in miso, no udon in miso. So I asked if I could replace the ramen with udon, and he said no, we have ramen in miso, udon in another soup.

Unknown to their owners, tiny shadows would start to tail beneath everyone’s feet, like daydreams unwilling to let go. They would elongate, and eventually glide over each other.

At 1:46pm, a teenage boy in a giant black T-shirt and baggy jeans would set up his speakers and guitar somewhere in the centre of the piazza, and jam jambon.

-        You think the puppet and the angel would fall in love?
-        Huh?
-        You know, love at first sight?
-        I don’t know, maybe. But you see, the world is always more boring than our imagination.

A middle-aged lady screams in pleasure as she finds that the cell phone she has been looking for everywhere is safe and sound by my feet. Amen, amen, palms together. A coin shimmers into my bucket. This time I pirouette, careful that I don’t fall off the bench.

Then the tourists would file back into their buses, eggs being put back into the egg carton by a meticulous housewife.

[short short story]

The cousin who never cried

Wed, 01 Sep 2010 00:00:00 -0700

When Bonnie was three, she hated going to her grandparents’. Not that she disliked her grandparents, who, Monday to Friday, at 4pm, would pick her up from her daycare a few blocks away from their apartment. It was her evil five-year-old cousin, Josh, who was pale as a ghost but liked to pretend that he was a pirate. He didn’t have to go to school, and could roam freely doing whatever he wanted.

She once asked her grandma, while her grandpa was talking to the ice cream man for her ice cream sandwich, “Why can Josh get everything he wants?” Every time Bonnie and Josh wanted the same thing - the same colored crayon, the same piece of fish, the same candy, the same toy… - grandpa and grandma would pronounce Josh the possessor of the thing.

“Josh is special, sweetheart,” grandma said, “just let him have his way”. Bonnie pouted in protest; she was special too no? Grandpa handed Bonnie the ice cream sandwich, and the Josh matter was forgotten amidst the sweet crunchiness until the next unfair contest.

When Bonnie was four, she started learning the violin. Grandpa had set up a violin corner in the living room, by the thick canary yellow curtains. Everyday from 4:30pm to 5pm, and from 5:30 to 6pm, serious squeaking and coughing of the violin could be heard. Grandma would read the newspaper behind her sharp-angled glasses, grandpa would lean over the fish tank feeding the four palm-sized gold (actually maroon) fish.

“My poor ears,” Josh would add a line as he trot about the living room with his pirate attire, flying robots and saving the world. Sometimes he would hide behind the curtain and poke Bonnie. Bonnie looked forward to 7pm, when the bell rings and Mom would pick her up after work.

When Bonnie was five, she demonstrated to grandpa, grandma, and Josh on the kitchen table how to play Slap Jack, the most popular game at her kindergarten (the lucky Josh still didn’t have to go to school). You slap the card when the number you call out appears on the card or when a Jack appears, Bonnie explained. And you slap like this, Bonnie showcased a thundering bang on the table. Grandpa freaked out, and said Josh wasn’t allowed to play this game because his ivy insert would break. Bonnie scrutinized Josh’s hands, each wrapped up with white bands that had little pirate stickers on them. There’s ivy underneath?

Josh can play, grandma smiled, handing each person a napkin. The game is now Drop Jack, Grandma explained; instead of slapping, you drop the napkin.

When Bonnie was six, she gave her first public violin solo at her elementary school’s annual talent show. She bowed amidst seas of clapping. Josh was the flower person. He walked up the stage in suit and tie, hair gelled into a sharp spike, holding a batch of flowers the size of his torso. His hands were still covered to protect those all-important ivy things. He stood directly in front of her and bowed, lifting the flowers up towards her with all his might. Though older, Josh was now only up to Bonnie’s shoulders. Dangling down his bony figure was a really puffy belly. It took grandma forever to find a suit that fit him.

Bonnie gracefully held the violin and bow with one hand, and took the flowers with the other. Something in the flowers made her sneeze hard, blowing all the little white flowers onto the stage and the kids sitting in the front row.

Back at her grandparents’, Bonnie sat cross-legged in grandma’s burgundy arm chair, torrents of tears soaking Kleenex after Kleenex. Josh’s pale bony face poked out of the lego corner. “Stop crying,” he gently demanded. “You are not pretty when you cry,” Josh added, quietly but forcefully.

Bonnie blew her nose and dried her eyes - she didn’t want to look ugly.

After a moment of analyzing the logic of Josh’s words, Bonnie asked, “So I’m pretty when I’m not crying?” A few teardrops were still dangling down her long curly eye lashes.

“Maybe,” Josh continued building his lego ship. That was comforting. Bonnie ran over to the lego corner and gave her skinny little cousin a bear hug.

That year, Josh’s birthday party was held at a city hospital a few hours away from their town. His room was stuffed with people. His favorite robot, Rex, stood silently by his pillow. Various tubes and lines went in and out of his wan little body. Machines that were much bigger than he was buzzed and hummed around him. His hands were no longer wrapped up by bands with pirate stickers on them. Instead, tubes went from his hands to bottles that hung up side down above his bed. That was the ivy thing? Bonnie hated the ivy thing.

Josh’s Mom placed on his bedside table a picture-book-sized tiramisu with eight candles, each featuring a fake red twinkling flame. It was Josh’s favourite cake.

“What’s your wish?” Grandpa asked.

Josh closed his eyes and thought for a bit. “I want to fly around the world in a hot air balloon”.

Grandpa nodded, “I will get you on a hot air balloon.”

Bonnie had wanted to go on a hot balloon too.

“Can Bonnie come as well?” Josh asked. The setting sun peeked through the window, spilling its last rays.

“Yes, Bonnie can come as well.” Grandpa stroked Josh’s little head with his big rough hand. He turned his head towards the blank hospital wall for a moment. In the dim light, Bonnie saw that tears were welling up Grandpa’s eyes, dripping and disappearing into his pepper and salt beard. Then the air was filled with the quiet sobbing of all the adults and little kids in the room. Well, all except Bonnie and Josh. They grinned at each other cherishing the secret they had shared. Bonnie helped Josh plump his pillow, leaning Rex against his shoulders. Josh’s smile was sunshine.

When Bonnie was seven, she hated going to her grandparents’. The apartment was the same, the violin corner the lego pirate ship the dangly curtains the Drop Jack table the robots who were supposed to save the world. It was missing Josh, Josh’s pirate hairdo, Josh’s teasing, Josh’s unreasonableness, Josh. Bonnie quickly dried the teardrop that dangled down from her eyelashes.

[short short story]